Pillarbox Red Rage, Part One

I've found that having pink hair has given me a bit of an attitude problem.  Well, I guess it's more that having pink hair has given me permission to have an attitude problem. 
To elaborate, I am fully aware of the changed perceptions of me.  When I'm blonde, black, ginger - I am a sweet girl at first glance, and immediate responses follow along.  Those who know me though, even a little, know that even though I can be a sweet girl, I'm not.  I tell the most off-color jokes, I swear enough to make a sailor blush, etc.  But, being that in a crowd, it was convinient.
Now however, I have pink hair.  Which I guess makes my piercings more noticable at first, since me being weird is more instantly obvious.  Which makes people's first impressions of me similar to me being a law-breaking punk bitch.  Which again, people that know me ... okay it's half true.  I am a law breaker, but not in the way they think.  It's the under age drinking, weed smoking sort of law breaking.  And it's not that I'm a bitch ... it's that I'm a strong woman.  It's okay though, because I'm beginning to find the convinience in this too.

There's a part of me that is growing.  Her life motto is, "I am not your welcome mat.  I am not the person you are going to walk all over.  Find somebody else.  Actually, just not suck so you don't need to walk on people.  Or do not be surprised when you become the target for my wrath.  Also look at Elmo on the mother fucking boat."  She was already becoming a larger aspect of my personality, as I've been getting older and learning more and more how to set my limits with people, but it's interesting how much public perception can influence actions.
I had two incidents highlighting this perfectly, hence the part one.  On Saturday, I started receiving strange texts out of the blue.  I received about ten, from all different parts of the US, even Canada.  They all related back to a video game Portal (which if you don't know of you need to crawl away from the rock you live under).  It turned out somebody had gone to Mystery Google, and decided it was a good idea to put up my number and leaving portal texts on it as a mission.

To some, getting mad over this might seem ridiculous.  After all, I did not receive death threats, creepy phone calls, or have any violations on my safety.  All I got, aside from one girl who thought she had found a new friend in me, was texts relating to the mission.  However, that was a gamble on the part of whoever did it, because it can never be guaranteed what sort of people are looking around in sites like that.  Did they take that gamble with their safety?  No, they took it with mine.
Warning, I am about to do the un-American thing.  I am to decide, that a person is guilty on this one until proven innocent.  It's about the process of elimination.  Who has my phone number?  Who knows that I [usually] love Portal references?  This leaves about three people.  Three of whom deny it.  Two of whom I actually trust.  One of whom is really desperate to talk to me.  Now, I'm not saying this logic is correct, but I am saying that, at the time, and even now (albeit not quite so passionately), my thoughts were IT'S HER.
You want my attention?  Alright, you got it.  I picked up the phone, went outside, and left the angriest voicemail of my life.  I'm pretty sure my neighbors freaked out, convinced that banshees were, in fact, real, and wanted to eat their face.  I hung it up, turned around, and essentially bitchslapped my back door.  And shoved my hand through the window.

Now, I'm not going as far as to say I've never been angry until I had pink hair.  This is far from true: I am my parents' kid if in no way other than my temper.  However, it's usually not anger badass enough for me to shove my hand through a motherfucking window relatively unscatched.
Mostly though this was just an expensive lesson.  Not monetarily, because my dad is refusing to let me pay for it.  I'd like to, it was my stupid mistake.  It was expensive in the sense that I feel my family's perception of me has changed.  It was expensive in the sense that it could have been another unaffordable visit to the emergency room, the second in a couple months.
The lesson is, having a [justified] attitude malfunction should be about damaging the other person's face, not your own possessions.  This is actually a lesson I have to keep relearning in different ways.  It boils down to: when people fuck with you, you hurt them back.  You don't hurt yourself more.

Fashion Don't: Bowl Cut in Pillarbox Red

Warning: today's post is not particularly work safe.  It's not a particularly graphic image, but proceed with caution!

So for those fortunate souls who have never heard of a bowl haircut, it goes something like this:

Step One: Take bowl
Step Two: Put bowl on victim's head, like a ceramic hat.
Step Three: Cut hair around bowl.
Step Four: Join in the masses who laugh at your victim, for looking like a douche.

However, my reasons are deeper than this today, for we are discussing specifically pink hair.

So to the left, is a picture of a guy with a bowl cut.  Poor high fashion douche.  Technically, I could stop here.  I mean, this is a classy, potentially well-done example of the bowl cut, but ... it's still pretty not attractive.  If you want to add to the gross factor, imagine it in Pillarbox Red!  It's just not working on so many levels at that point.  So I'm about to add one more level.



Now, I would like to note once again: below is an image potentially not safe for work, school, strict parents, or virgin eyes.  If you or the people surrounding you are offended by everything and anything, you may not want to proceed.

So for comparison, I give you the image to the right.  It's not a real penis, or a dildo; it is, in fact, a lighter.  However, I figured it was pretty detailed enough to work, and was the only picture in the right position.  Look at the model douche, then back to the penis.  Back and forth.  Now, imagine him with the pink hair.


My moral today, children, is not only doing having a bowl cut make you a douche ... but it makes you look like a fucking penis.  Is that how you want strangers to know you?  "Hey, look, it's that walking penis with ears!"  No, you don't.


I also have a bonus fashion don't, that actually has nothing to do with pillarbox red hair, or even hair at all.  It's about Texan Pride.


I have no qualms with people having pride about where they come from.  I, personally, am very proud to have come from my mother's vagina.  However, I don't plan to tattoo it all over my body.  Hold on, thought about it, ew.

However, these hardcore Texans are fucking annoying me.  I'm a part time stagehand, and I oddly encounter a lot of them.  Like this guy today: had Texas tattooed on his arm, had the state tattooed on his calf, and wore a cowboy hat.  He was actually a funny nice guy.  I never would have known had I not had to work for him though, because he has douche written all over him in big, bold, stereotypically Texan letters!


Don't understand how stupid this is yet?  Just apply it to another state.  Don't Mess with Delaware?  True patriots live in New Hampshire?  Hi, it's nice to meet you, I have the outline of Maine tattooed on my vagina?


Wow, I am really all about genitalia today, aren't I?

Girly Fashion Do: Curls in Pillarbox Red

So consider this a part one of two on pink curls.  Today's is of the curling iron, burn your hair, it falls out in a few hours but in the meantime GOD it's sexy variety.  Some point in the near future, I'll do the sponge curler, have to sleep on in discomfort, (good) frizzy hippie waves that stay for days installment.

I personally have Straight Hair Syndrome.  SHS is when one's hair is naturally straight, or in my case has that slight does whatever it fucking wants wave, and the person in question constantly curls their hair, wishing they naturally had the ringlets of Kirsten Dunst in Interview with a Vampire, who can be seen to the right in her awesome nine year old Pedobear Bait glory.  Seriously, between all the implied homosexuality and pedophilia, how did that movie get made in the 90s?  Back on topic, most people are probably more familiar with Curly Hair Syndome, CHS, in which the person hates their stupid frizzy curls and spends their entire life refusing to leave home without their straightening iron.

So for Thanksgiving and my small family get together, I decided it would be awesome to curl my hair.  I got a curling iron out of my friend's moving that has pretty much been the best matched iron for my hair ever.  I've been absolutely dying for any excuse to use it since I got it, and hey look over there, it's an excuse!  Sweet!

Between the pictures and the undeniable truth that I can validate any fact I present with my own opinion, I'm considering it a fashion do because ... seriously, look at it!  It's fucking cute, okay!  I am a sucker for BAM bright hair, and then toned down, classy styling.  Hair in curls, a dress, and sexy heels?  That's what it's all about.

Con one to this fashion do, as anybody who has used a curling iron before will know, is it's a slow and uncomfortable process.  Think about it, you're taking a piece of really hot metal, and holding it near your head for ten to thirty seconds at a time.  Not to mention I have a LOT of hair (hair lady, vouch for me plz) so it's not a quick and easy thing.  Hair gets pulled, skin gets burned, etc.

Con two, and this may be a me alone thing, but like I said earlier it doesn't last very long.  It used to be, when I was younger, that one could take a curling iron to my hair first thing in the morning and it'd be that way until the end of the night.  Now ... well, I curled at my hair at noon, and it had completely gone straight before any company had even shown up at four.  I don't know if there's a product, or a technique, or something that keeps curled hair curled, but I'm hoping sponge curlers may be the solution.

The third and final con, and this not related to the curliness at all, is my hair is already starting to fade!  Which means that here soon, I'll need to move on to the next color.  So I think you should all vote in the poll to the upper right!  If you need examples of the colors:

All of these awesome pictures are from the website of our dye lords, manicpanic.com  I'll be dying my hair again at the beginning of the new year, maybe sooner if I'll lose this color as quickly as I've been told I will.  So vote!

Bleaching and Dyeing

This had been only the second time I had bleached my hair.  Naturally, I'm a dirty blonde (as the awesome bandaged picture to the left shows), so I usually don't really have to bleach.  However, with crazy colors I pretty much have to, or else they lack proper impact.

If somebody exists who actually likes this whole bleaching process, please leave a comment so you can be publically ridiculed.  It iches, like a motherfucker; it's messy, and usually some speckles of my skin get whiter than the rest of me; and the results are generally inconsistent.  I will say, however, that the bleached hair look is pretty awesome.  Not when it's done right and it gets that platinum blonde, though that's cool too, but that like yellow and orange weirdness.  My hair lady Nessa and I are probably alone on this front, but hey.

I didn't think to get a picture of me with the bleach on my head while I sit there slapping it like one of those ghetto girls on ANTM with the weaves.  I did, however, get this picture here.  Bleached hair turns me into an angry lesbian, apparently.

I'm making a Filament Frenzy wish right now, that in this whole process I won't have to bleach my hair much more. I know I'll have to go back and get roots from time to time ... but I'm going to pretend I don't know that, cause it makes my scalp hurt.

So we gave my hair a couple hour break between bleach and dye.  Partially because it needed to dry ... partially because parents showed up in the middle of it because Nessa's little brother and his friends had a klepto moment.  Ah, teenage boys.  They're such a silly breed of human.  Gotta say though, it's pretty awesome to meet concerned parentals when you look like that.  Probably thought I was the bad influence or something!

Then we came up with the latest fashion trend for the spring - the paper bag hat.  It really goes with anything!  I swear, there was something about that day where I needed to make gross faces and stick my tongue out at people.  I was probably in heat, it is an expression pretty similar to my "take me now" face.

I didn't even finish a jar!  For the future, I totally intend to buy a second jar, even if I only skim the top of it.  Better to have too much than not enough.  Plus I pay Nessa (who you can visit through my sidebar under Punk Rock Princess) in excess dye and food/cigarettes, so.

The end result was to the right.

Since I was going from memory, with no verbage from my hair lady, this may have dragged on a little.  It was a fun night though, with awesome results!

A Girl With a Mission

Hola once again, blogosphere.

My name is Melony. I am a twenty year old college student, long time graphic design major. Still am technically, just because it feels sort of stupid to request being undeclared.

As cool as this brief about me bit is, none of it is why I'm here. I'm here because, well, I am a girl with a mission.

Recently, I dyed my hair that awesome color you see to the right. It's more pink than the image lets on, and as future images will show you. It's a Manic Panic dye, known as Pillarbox Red. A friend of mine gave it to me for free, an extra jar from a time when she could have wild hair, a time that had long past.

From the moment I washed the excess dye out of my hair and looked in the mirror, I was a changed woman. I fell in love with the color, how I looked with such crazy hair. I had been a victim of Manic Panic before, once going to a Harry Potter premiere with Ultra Violet hair, as Tonks. So I don't really know why it was such a, well ... boost for me this time around.

Then I noticed something funny, which I've noticed also as somebody with piercings. I had a public reaction like never before. I'd give a smile, I'd get in return a look like I had eaten the person's cat. Naturally, this was only with strangers; most of my friends all but mauled me, and in fact, one friend did maul me. Though I did have another friend try to help me remove the dead furby from my head.

As I stewed over these reactions for the following couple days, a brilliant idea came to me.

So I call it Mission: Filament Frenzy. The idea, is I'm going to dye my hair, over the next however long it takes, every color Manic Panic offers. Not including black (I've had black, it was fun ... but it never washed out) or any of the like three natural colors Manic Panic sells (because natural hair is bo-ring!). Then I'm going to document it. What the dying was like, the reactions I've received, how it's affected my mood, how long it lasted, etc. I also hope to get second opinions, from other people who have used Manic Panic.

I now give the official statement: I am not doing this on a dare. I am not doing this because I didn't get enough hugs as a child. I am not doing this because I lost a dare. I am doing this, because you're only young once, right?